Operation: VietnamReview

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Leave no man behind. (Even though you'll want to.)

By Lucas M. Thomas

Four men get lost in the jungle. You've got to get them out. With the help of some guns and grenades, a few called-in helicopter airstrikes, and the occasional swear word Operation: Vietnam asks you to take command of a quartet of stranded soldiers in the middle of the Vietnam War and make sure they get back home in one piece. But, even assisted, it might still be difficult to do &#Array; because in addition to outrunning enemy forces, you'll also have to fight back against this game's murky visuals and troublesome control style.

Operation: Vietnam is an action/shooter design shown from a top-down perspective, not at all dissimilar from the birdseye-view stages in certain Contra games or some older classics like SNK's Ikari Warriors. But the action isn't nearly so fast and frantic in this game. Whereas other similar-looking titles throw out constant waves of enemies and ammunition and often feature simple one-hit kills, Operation: Vietnam takes a slower, more strategic approach.

You begin the game as Sarge, a lone soldier with a standard, rapid-firing gun, but quickly find and rescue three of the companions that were in the same helicopter with you when it crashed behind enemy lines in the Vietnamese jungle. Doc, the medic, joins you first and has the ability to enhance the healing properties of health packs. Scopes, the sniper, is third on the team and is armed with a longer-ranged rifle than anyone else. Hopper, the final of your four, has a slow-firing but very powerful rocket launcher slung across his shoulders.

The hook in Operation: Vietnam is in managing your multiple men the best way possible to advance through each stage. But herein lies the game's first issue &#Array; squad control. Your lead character, the guy you're directly controlling yourself, is usually in pretty good shape when entering into combat because you'll be able to get him to dodge around incoming enemy fire. But the other three fellows, following in a line behind, aren't so lucky &#Array; they're not smart enough to get out of the way when a bullet is heading toward them, and they'll often take a lot of unnecessary damage while contributing little to the offensive power of your force.

You can hold down the R Button to get all four guys to mimic your main man's movements, meaning they'll all walk up when you press Up, down when you press Down and so forth, but then only your primary character can fire his weapon. The other three become just large, cumbersome extensions of your hitbox.

You can further command them to move forward and attack on their own, independent of you, but again they'll do so stupidly and end up taking far too many unnecessary hits along the way. Your last recourse is to tell them to stay, stopping where they are and not moving, which is the most effective option &#Array; and the most boring. For a squad-based shooter design's most desirable tactic to be splitting up and leaving your group behind so you can go it alone without being bothered is pretty sad.

But, settling on that strategy, advancing through the 10+ missions in Operation: Vietnam can be fairly interesting &#Array; just taking one or two guys at a time to explore different paths, you can bounce back to "Squad B" whenever you need to clear out the Viet Cong from the jungles, villages and military complexes you'll explore. The large environments and set pieces don't look too bad, displayed from above in 3D. But you might have trouble making out some of the smaller details.

Like your men. All the action is displayed on the DS system's upper screen, but your men appear to be only about 12 pixels tall. Enemies, the same. Pick-up items like health packs and dog tags, even smaller. You'll be squinting and straining your vision to make out some of what you're seeing in Operation: Vietnam, and that's never too much fun to do &#Array; especially when that strain makes targeting your foes difficult to do. The on-screen crosshairs flies stiffly between the points of your character's visual focus and sometimes settles into a locked-on position overtop a Viet Cong soldier, but discerning the subtle change in color when that happens is also hard to do.

Operation: Vietnam

In Operation: Vietnam, a chopper flight over the thick jungles of worn- torn Vietnam goes horribly wrong as the transport is shot down deep inside Viet Cong territory. Surrounded by the enemy, players must rally their squad and lead them back to safety. Along the way, players must fend off repeated assaults while liberating oppressed villagers.

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The Verdict

Operation: Vietnam just has an awful lot of setbacks working against it, and working against its fun factor. The concept of a squad-based action/shooter done in a style similar to some of the older classics like Contra and Ikari Warriors is a fair one, but the frustrations of control and the indistinct visuals take away any potential there might have been. What you're left with is a game that's just mediocre &#Array; but the foundation is there. If this design's issues were addressed, and perhaps a multiplayer option was introduced to give it a bit more weight, a future Operation: Somewhere title could be worth checking out.